Samsung officials took the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City to show off the company’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S IV, on March 14. The device is Samsung’s latest challenge to the Apple iPhone.

According to The New York Times, the new Galaxy S IV comes equipped with several innovative features such as Smart Scroll, which allows the user to scroll on the screen by simply moving his or her eyes. The phone can also be controlled with hand gestures picked up by the front-facing camera. “Once you spend time with the Galaxy S IV, I’m very confident you’ll find how its innovations make your life simpler and fuller,” Samsung Mobile Communications President JK Shin said, according to the newspaper.

The Galaxy S IV is slated for release in the second quarter and will be available in the U.S. through Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. However, Samsung did not release pricing for its newest device.

Yankee Group VP of Research Carl Howe comments

“If Samsung were Apple, it would have named this design the Galaxy S IIIS. While Samsung updated the internals and the software, the S IV is just another iteration on the Galaxy design to be slightly bigger, faster and with a few new apps.

We fully expect the Galaxy S IV to be an excellent flagship phone for Samsung, but Yankee Group doesn’t see the S IV allowing Samsung to gain ground against Apple in the crucial U.S. market. According to Yankee Group’s 2013 US Consumer Survey, March, only about 15 percent of consumers intend to buy a Samsung phone within the next six months, while 40 percent intend to buy Apple iPhones within that period. That’s actually a slight decline from the December quarter. Further, Samsung isn’t generating the same kind of brand loyalty that Apple owners have; in that same survey, only 61 percent of Samsung owners intend to buy another Samsung as their next smartphone; that contrasts dramatically with 85 percent of Apple iPhone owners intending to buy another iPhone. Unless Samsung works very hard to change consumers’ minds in the next six months, we actually see Apple gaining ownership share on Samsung in the U.S. in 2013 rather than the other way around.”

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